


A Look From A.F.A.R.

by Eisenschrott



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Grief/Mourning, Other, Prostitution, Speciesism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:27:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6680215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisenschrott/pseuds/Eisenschrott
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three Imperial officers walk into a brothel; a few careless words spoil the fun for everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They’d lost two admirals, and their entire staff along with them, before they’d even driven out of Coronet City.

Major Veers glanced up at the Corellian night sky and silently thanked the stars for that small mercy. He was still stuck with a Moff and with the lowest-ranking of the admirals. At least they were all men, and in all likelihood one of them was into women only.

That didn’t make Rear Admiral Jerjerrod any more bearable.

Veers watched him lean over to the driver, tap on the woman’s helmet and slur, “Pull over, lad, I have to piss.”

“Yes, sir,” the stormtrooper said. Despite the helmet vocoder, the voice was very clearly female.

“Keep driving,” Veers cut in.

“Yes, sir.”

Jerjerrod mashed his reddened, pouty face between the speeder’s front seats, his bleary eyes and ale-smelling breath fixed on Veers. “Excuse me, _Major_ , what is the meaning of this countermand?”

The major stared on at the city lights a few kilometres ahead. His mind prepared a polite and respectful answer, _We have almost reached our destination, sir; you will be given medical assistance at the garrison medbay, should you require it_. His mouth ignored the polite suggestion and snarled, “Remember the chain of command, _Rear Admiral_. You should’ve given that order to me, and I would have transmitted it to my trooper.”

“Veers, for the love of the Force, it’s four of us here!”

“It is still a chain of command. I reckon you’ve been a Navy man long enough to have learned how it works?”

That was rude. Imprudent. But Veers was tired of babysitting these pompous gits. Jerjerrod had been prating technobabble all the time, and pissing off trade unionists that had taken Veers months of intimidation to prevent from storming Coronet City with spades and hydrospanners. Well, everyone knew Rear Admiral Jerjerrod was a military ignoramus and a desk jockey; no news here.

Slumped in a corner of the back seat, Moff Juno hooted with laughter. “Just four of us? That’ll be five soon enough, boys ‘n girl! I’m comming Lady Jerjerrod this instant…”

Veers heard the beep of a comlink coming online.

Jerjerrod pulled away onto the back seat. “Nonononononono—”

Juno cackled, Jerjerrod cursed, a kick or two thumped on the back of Veers’ seat.

Fucking nine hells. Veers hadn’t hated inspections so much since the distant era when he was a cadet, and everything within the perimeter of the academy had to be spit-polished to the tiniest button.

Eliana had just become his girlfriend, back then…

He slammed his fist on the transparisteel window, hard, and the pain distracted him from the memory.

The ruckus on the back seat quieted down.

Veers opened and closed his hand. The knock against the blast-proof glass had left it numb, but it didn’t hurt upon flexing. Good. Last thing he needed was to break a couple fingers in anger again.

The first houses of Kolene started lining the sides of the roadway. Veers had instructed the driver to take the longer route and drive through the southern suburbia of housing blocks, rather than venture in the shantytowns at the north and eastern gates. Right now, though, he slightly regretted not having the chance to kick Juno and Jerjerrod out into the slums at night, and see if they made it out alive.

Jerjerrod groaned. “Juno, is this really necessary now? I told you I need to piss!”

“Well, lad, I need to bugger something. It helps the digestion, the medidroid told me.”

Veers crossed gazes with the driver’s helmet lenses. She was no rookie, even when it came to drunken men; that was why Veers had chosen her for this mission.

“Major Veers,” the Moff called and the major flinched into attention, “isn’t there a military brothel in this town?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“You’re a bad, bad liar, Major. Your wife was better at it. Course she was, like all women.”

Veers gasped as if a full-power spinning backfist had hit him in the guts.

“Now have your driver… _drive_ us to that whorehouse. And quickly, or I’m going to roger Rear Admiral Jerjerrod right here on the back seat of your speeder.”

“Sir, uh,” Jerjerrod stammered, “you… you aren’t serious, are you?”

“Take the next turn on Alderaan Road,” Veers told the driver. “Punch in the address for the Heart of Gold.”

Juno’s catarrhal laughter filled the speeder again, and alcoholic vapours wafted to Veers’ face, uncomfortably close. Especially uncomfortable while he was trying to take deep, regular, calming breaths.

“You know the brothel’s name.” Moff Juno’s tone was taunting. “Just because you like to be informed about everything, eh, Major?”

“Indeed, sir.”

Juno was still in a giggly mood when the speeder banked in front of their destination. Two storeys, unremarkable façade that looked older than the Imperial Army barracks (perhaps the Armed Forces Auxiliary Relief had requisitioned a historical palace for their purposes, but Veers had neither knowledge about that nor wished to have any), two small pennants with the Imperial crest swinging lazily in the breeze, and not even a red light.

Jerjerrod staggered out of the speeder first, glanced around desperately and, before anyone could stop him, secluded himself behind a streetlight with his hands to the zipper of his trousers.

The driver made to help Moff Juno out of the speeder, but in the streetlights Veers didn’t like the grin on the Moff’s wrinkled face, so he waved her away.

Moff Juno’s heart and all the other relevant body parts were already set on what awaited inside the brothel. With Veers acting as crutch under his left arm, he hobbled towards the entrance whistling the Imperial March. Jerjerrod joined them midway through.

“Admiral.”

“Who, me?”

 _Yes, arsehole, you. Unfortunately_. “Your trousers. The fly’s open.”

“Ah. Thank you.” He fumbled with the front of his trousers, then gave up with a huff. “To the ninth hell with it. Better to save some time.”

It was very unlikely in an Imperial-sponsored brothel, where sanitary controls were frequent and strict, but Veers wished Jerjerrod would catch the drip tonight. Gamorrean drip, if possible—the one where the pus discharge turned corrosive.

At the entrance, the lock checked their retinal scans; being a surveillance computer, it failed to be disgusted by the drunk state of Juno and Jerjerrod, and let their party in to the foyer.

“Hah-hah!” Juno slipped out of Veers’ hold. His boots thumped on a heavy, flower-patterned carpet that already bore several dusty footprints.

A smiling Zabrak woman in an overly sumptuous robe glided in from a silk curtain door. Guitar and castanets music followed in her wake, and raucous laughter.

Both Juno and Jerjerrod were grinning like idiots, elbowing each other as the madam explained merchandise and pricelists (her own words). Discovering that half the Army garrison in Kolene— _his_ garrison—shared a non-Human fetish was enough to quash whatever germ of lust Veers might have been growing. He only asked the madam where the bar was, and marched to the counter by keeping to the shadier sides of the common room, lowering his cap over his face.

He didn’t spare one look at the brightly lit dance floor and the nimble bodies writhing on the poles there, and barked, “Just get me a pint of ale!” to the ‘tender droid because it was the first thing that came to his mind.

A hand patted his shoulder and stroked his neck, gloved fingers reaching up to just below the ear. Veers held his breath and clutched the edge of the counter. “Moff Juno, I respectfully request you don’t touch me—”

“Ale? Are you having _ale_? What are you, going native with those penniless miners you mount guard on?” Juno waved at the ‘tender droid. “Get my lad here a Naboo red—Shiraya’s Blood, of course!”

“A glass or the entire bottle, sir?” asked the ‘tender.

“Bottle. I’m buying.”

Veers’ stomach shrank back in terror.

“My wife told me your wife really appreciated that wine, isn’t it so? Ah, yes, yes, you weren’t around when our ladies met, were you? Eh, well, you have a bad habit of not being around when something happens to your wife, right, Major?”

All of a sudden his head felt light, his body cold, and his arms heavy. As if he were about to faint.

Droid fingers pushed in front of him a glass and a polished bottle, dark like blood.

“I propose a toast to all the fair ladies we’ve never been faithful to—”

Veers turned to look Moff Juno in his red-rimmed eyes. Juno laughed, then blinked, then cleared his throat. His hand left Veers’ shoulder. “Well, you’ll know where to find me when it’s curfew time.”

Veers lowered his gaze back to the wine. He swatted the droid’s hand off and poured a full glass himself, ignoring the spillage on his sleeves and on the counter. Then another, and another.


	2. Chapter 2

Jerjerrod’s brain was good at mathematics. No matter how much alcohol had doused it.

Thus, in a soundly accurate estimation, he was certain that ten minutes had passed since they’d entered the whorehouse. The two women and two men on the pole dance floor finished their number around the sixth minute, and started another set to a different music; it featured more same-sex groping than the previous. Although the dancers were all very pretty, Jerjerrod preferred to slump back into the pouf he’d crashed on.

Most importantly, he preferred to focus on the Mirialan woman sitting astride his lap.

She was a pleasant dark shade of khaki, not unlike a Human skin tone. Her hair was pulled back in a loose bun, jet black on top of the skull and bright red bangs adorned with ringlets, that glittered at every tilt of her head. Blue eyes, white and red winged eyeliner, white and red lipstick, the cheek markings of her species faded but still visible under the foundation—or an unusually light plastic surgery. White see-through silk robe, with thin red patterns. Under the robe, nothing. A halo of sweet perfume with a hint of sweat and pussy electrified the air around her.

Jerjerrod smiled, took her right hand, kissed it and guided it to the shoulder fastener of his uniform.

The pouf shook. Jerjerrod frowned and tried to push away Moff Juno’s prone body—and chiefly, to push the Moff’s head off the prostitute’s thigh. Juno’s cap slipped off his balding scalp, and the Moff blinked his watery eyes into focus on Jerjerrod.

“What happened to the other half of the couch?” asked Juno.

“There’s a whole one, over there.”

Juno grumbled. “Nah, blast it, too much walking.” He grumbled again and finished the noise with a belch.

The prostitute leaned over, her breasts brushing Jerjerrod’s chest and her breath feathering his ear, “Your friend needs to pay, if he wants to join our fun.”

He sucked in breath and silently, fervently prayed she would—

Her tongue circled the contour of his earlobe, then he felt a gentle nibble.

It was enough to make Jerjerrod groan and grab the woman tight, gripping her supple buttocks through the rumples of silk.

“What’s… what’s your name, darling?” he wheezed, his face in the crook of her neck.

“Brina. Yours?”

“I’m Hillar,” interjected Moff Juno, loud enough that they could hear him all the way to the Deep Core. “But my Winnie calls me ‘old bumbling bantha’. She thinks it offends me, haha!”

Jerjerrod sighed in annoyance, but Brina tittered, because that’s what whores are trained to do when their customers assume they’re being funny.

That annoyed Jerjerrod even more. “Uh, sir, listen, I don’t want to be impolite but—”

“Wife… Right! Oh. Dammit.” He rolled onto his side and clutched Jerjerrod’s hand, tearing it off Brina’s arse. Jerjerrod tried to shake it free but the old man had a durasteel grip. “Tiaan, lad, I’ve made a mess.”

It wasn’t polite, or politically wise, to tell a Moff to bugger off and clean up the mess on his own. What a pity Jerjerrod wasn’t so drunk as to forget etiquette. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve made Major Veers cry.”

Jerjerrod tried to picture the perpetually scowling infantry officer with tears streaming down his stone-cast face. He could draw starship blueprints on a tablecloth with his left hand while fingering the woman on his lap with his right, and yet, that mental image was too much effort to conjure. “What in the nine hells…”

Juno waved a hand in a direction that it took Jerjerrod several glances to figure out was supposed to point towards the bar.

Major Veers was a big man, it was impossible to miss him. He had his back turned to where Jerjerrod sat sprawled, and his shoulders rose and fell as if, indeed, he were crying.

“What’s wrong with him?” Shit, he shouldn’t have asked. He had sex to have. Why was the booze making him worry about other people’s wellbeing now, of all times?

“The garrison commander is here?” Brina spoke up. Noticing Jerjerrod’s questioning look, she explained, “I’ve heard the officers joke about him, sometimes. He’s never come to the brothel or taken up a mistress; nobody ever even caught him fapping.”

Moff Juno slapped her thigh. Angrily, to hurt. Brina yelped, and held on more tightly to Jerjerrod. She was warm and soft, and that made him want to protect her. He hugged her back and cradled her gently.

“Show some respect, greenskin,” Juno hissed. “His wife—delightful lady, absolutely delightful, even my wife had a crush on her—well, she had an accident while he was out on the frontline. Veers’ wife, I mean, not my Winnie—it’s going to take more to kill off my Winnie. Two years ago, I think… Yes, yes, that was before the operations on Boz Pity. Two years ago. Left him alone with a kid to raise and a big hole in his heart.”

“Please, Juno, spare us the sentimentalism.”

Another slap landed on Jerjerrod’s calf, and it was his turn to cry out. He was more dignified than the alien whore, of course: he just cursed aloud.

“Don’t be disrespectful, lad! Veers doesn’t deserve it. Aren’t you married, too?”

“Yes. And widowerhood doesn’t sound all that bad to me.” He defied Juno’s glare, chin up. “I advise you not to judge me. It’s harsh, yes, but it’s the truth. And none of your business.” He was surprised at the sourness that rose up his throat and hoarsened his voice. Blast this shit. He flashed Brina a grin and took her chin in his free hand. “Now, let’s go back to business…”

Her coy, seductive expression had been replaced by a sombre one, that made her look older. Or rather, her proper age, whatever that was.

Jerjerrod’s heart sank like a Separatist command ship at the siege of Ryloth. Damn, who was the cheap sentimentalist now? “Are you unwell, Brina?”

Meanwhile, Juno snorted. “The young ones these days have no respect! Just like they didn’t have any in _my_ days! Bah.” Jerjerrod ignored him.

Brina nuzzled her cute face into the crook of Jerjerrod’s neck. He shivered as her breath tickled his ear again. She whispered, “Poor major. It must be terrible, living with that pain.”

“Keep talking, dear.” Jerjerrod told himself he really didn’t give a blast about the terrible pain of an officer he barely knew, let alone harboured any comradely feeling about—and the antipathy was mutual, if the brusque way Veers had treated him with all day long was any indication. Jerjerrod only wanted the whore’s voice to keep tickling his ear.

“It’s like having a bite-flower sting stuck deep in your flesh. You are afraid of the pain that carving it out would cause you, so you leave it there. You leave it to fester and dissolve into poison, and hurt even more and sink deeper as time passes.”

He rolled a strand of scarlet-dyed hair around his index finger. “Very poetic. Are you talking from experience?”

Her body went stiff. It was just a moment, but he felt it.

“Course she is,” muttered Moff Juno. “All whores can tell a sob story. Some are even true!”

“I’m widowed,” Brina’s voice went so soft Jerjerrod could only hear it because the music had ceased and the crowd wasn’t clapping. “My husband was a Rebel sympathiser. They arrested everyone. I don’t know what happened to him, to my parents and my in-laws, or to my siblings.” She nestled closer to Jerjerrod. “What happened to _me_ , is that I’m making amend in the eyes of the Emperor.” A kiss grazed the underside of his jaw. “And you’ll find out I’m _very_ good at it,” she drawled like a proper whore, while the pole dance music began playing again and the assembled half-dressed Imperials whistled and cheered at the dancers.

Jerjerrod stroked the small of her back, skin and bunched up robe, pensively. “I have a better idea.”

“I have a better one yet,” said Moff Juno. By now, he was lying flat on the floor with his eyes closed. “If you care to listen to your senior—”

“Go to Major Veers.” Stars, he was going to regret this. “Get him hot and take him to the bedroom.”

Brina pulled away. Before she could protest, Jerjerrod pressed a finger to her prettily painted lips. “My fee will pay for that, don’t worry. I’m ceding you to him, not asking you to take on both of us together.”

Her eyes narrowed. It was a beautiful expression, with that make-up and the long eyelashes and intense blue irises. Yes, Jerjerrod definitely regretted his own generosity. But he didn’t stop it. “If you do it and get his lower-deck cannon unjammed, I will track down your family. I’ll let you know where they are.”

 _Where they lie buried, that is—unless the corpses were jettisoned into space or incinerated_.

Jerjerrod felt the hair on the back of his head stand. So, he’d managed to find something he to regret even more than his stupid sentimental side. Well, shit.

“Really?” There was hope in the shine of her eyes, in her voice. Her right hand caressed the rank badge on Jerjerrod’s tunic.

“Yes, dear. I have the authority to do that.” No. No, he didn’t have it. He was going to be laughed out of the Joint Chiefs council for this.

He grinned. Fuck those old bastards. The alcohol in his bloodstream and the boner-induced giddiness made it easy to indulge in his own insolence. Just fuck them. They had no respect for him: wimpy engineer, sorry excuse for a soldier, pampered rich boy. He might as well do something that being an admiral allowed him to do.

Jerjerrod kissed Brina’s cheek, then sat up straight and, as soon as a wave of nausea had come and gone rolling over him, pulled himself upright, without leaving the prostitute’s hands.

“Careful.” She gently pushed him aside and kept him from stumbling onto Moff Juno’s snoring form on the floor.

Jerjerrod gave her another cheek kiss for her kindness. It only occurred halfway through the bar that his boot hitting Moff Juno’s body, in any place where it could produce discomfort, wasn’t an unpleasant thought at all.

Veers was sitting hunched over the counter where Moff Juno had left him. A big man like him did a rather poor job at sitting hunched, anyway. More interestingly, there was an open, half-empty bottle of wine in front of him. Next to it, in Veers’ clenched fist, a red-stained chalice.

Jerjerrod eyed the bottle label. “Shiraya’s Blood! You have good taste, Major.”

“Get lost.”

He went stiff for a moment. The tone would have had the same effect on a rabid anooba, probably. Brina pressed herself to Jerjerrod’s side; feeling that warm, soft body against him boosted his confidence anew. “Major, I outrank you. Even if you’re plastered, you do not get to give me orders.”

Veers scowled at him. Then at Brina. Back at him, scowling harder. Big man, appraised an increasingly frightened part of Jerjerrod’s brain; broad shoulders, arms thick with muscles. The biceps were tense under the uniform sleeves, from balling up the fists. Veers was ready to attack.

_You outrank him, Tiaan. You outrank him. You. Outrank. Him._

Jerjerrod swallowed; his throat had dried up to a parch. Still, he treated Veers to his most charming smile, one that sometimes tamed even Lady Jerjerrod. “I am of the opinion you and Miss Brina here could strike a wonderful friendship.”

“Get lost, Admiral.”

Warmth, softness, and female flesh abandoned Jerjerrod; he shuddered in the sudden cold.

Veers made a start as Brina flung her arms around his shoulders, but didn’t push her away.

“Please, let me sleep with you.”

Oh, that was a wonderful pleading voice. Wonderful. It stoked the slow-burning fire in Jerjerrod’s lower belly, made his pants fit tighter. He had to hold onto the counter; by some weird phenomenon of physics, his knees were turning from solid to liquid state of matter.

“My husband is dead,” he heard Brina murmur. “The admiral promised he’ll find out where the rest of my kin is, if I sleep with you.”

“What?”

“I mean to _keep_ that promise,” said Jerjerrod, avoiding Veers’ glower. In his alcohol-addled and hormone-addled state, he found even the BD-3000 ‘tender droid pleasant to gaze at.

He dropped onto a padded stool, running a hand through his hair (since when had his cap gone missing?). Sithspit, an alien kink was bad, but if tonight marked the start of a droid kink, he would understand if his wife divorced him.

Over the music he caught a whisper of Brina’s voice, and the growl of Veers’.

The ‘tender droid bent over, maximising the rather disturbing effect of her brass tits, and asked him in the robotic approximation of a sultry voice if he cared for a drink.

Just then, the Naboo wine bottle slid on the counter over to Jerjerrod. He saw it coming, but the motion didn’t translate to his arm muscles and he nearly knocked it to the floor in the attempt to catch it.

“Finish it, Admiral.”

Jerjerrod looked up, and smirked at the spectacle. Veers had gotten to his feet, latched an arm around Brina’s waist, and let her unbutton his tunic. Her hand was under the flap, a protrusion in the fabric that circled slowly at the height of his right nipple.

“I hope you choke on it, sir,” said Veers.

By standing on her toes and craning her neck as high as she could, Brina managed to kiss his chin. “Follow me.”

The instant the pair had their backs turned on Jerjerrod, he raised the bottle and gave a silent toast to whatever was about to happen in the bedchamber upstairs.

Veers held Brina close, husband-like, and Jerjerrod felt a pang of jealousy. No clue if it was at the idea of holding someone like that, or of being held.

Then he smiled at the wine, all alone with him. “A clean glass, honey, if you’d be so kind,” he chirped to the ‘tender droid, who served him one with a giggle. The voice sounded less robotic when she laughed— _stop it, brain_.

Shiraya’s Blood wasn’t his favourite; his homeworld of Tinnel IV was a sea planet, with a cuisine rich on fish, and every Tinnelian worth the name knew that fish goes with white wine.

“Shall I pour a drop for you, cutie?” the ‘tender droid asked, making it sound like an obscenely biological request— _stop it, cock_. He made the effort to do his fly up, at last; his fingertips got caught in the zipper a few times, but he endured until his lower-deck artillery was again decent and uncomfortably snug.

He needed a vacation away from worrisome machines, Jerjerrod thought as he watched the wine trickle inside the chalice. A vacation that didn’t include alcohol. Maybe it should include his wife, a bed, no clothes. But _her_ presence would make the _alcohol_ ’s presence necessary. He snatched the glass off the ‘tender’s hand and downed it in one gulp.


	3. Chapter 3

Brina guided the garrison commander upstairs to the bedrooms. With a big, strong arm draped over her shoulders, he tried to make her feel like he was leading her. Maybe Zoan used to do that, too, on the stone steps that led to their front door; she didn’t wish to remember. The less an Imperial reminded her of her husband, the better.

“The admiral paid for a luxury boudoir,” she told him.

“Filthy rich bastard,” Major Veers said without emotion, not even anger.

“This is the first time I set foot in one.”

Veers said nothing. Not the type who assumed conversation was included in the performance’s price. Brina mentally sighed in relief. She wasn’t in the mood for smiling and nodding and laughing at an Imperial’s pillow talk.

The lacquered door slid open as soon as the lock recognised Brina’s retinal scan, letting them in to a softly-lit room with a large bed decked out in red sheets. The moquette floor appeared as dark a purple in the low light as the wine Veers had been drinking downstairs. Next to the bed stood the all-familiar cabinet of work tools.

The air had a scent of fruity, spiced deodorant. To Brina’s nostrils, it was sickening; but the pills they gave her and the other workers almost every day at the infirmary had, among other effects, an anti-emetic one.

The door slid closed behind them, and the chrono display on it started counting backwards from two standard hours.

Veers gaped around with the air of someone who had never stepped into anything fancier than an army barrack before. Then he cleared his throat. “So… What is your name?”

“Brina.”

“Breeh-nah.” He rolled the R wrong, like all native Basic speakers. “I guess you already know mine.”

“Would you like me to address you as ‘Major’, sir?”

“No! Stars, no! I—my name is Max. Just call me Max.”

She ran her hands up and down his torso, and wondered how hard one would have to kick and punch him to knock him out. Perhaps if she were a Besalisk or a Wookiee… She smiled. “Hmm. Nice. I’m glad I’m getting you instead of the admiral.”

A fleeting smirk curled up his mouth.

Her hands reached down and took hold of his buckle belt. “Do you want me to undress you?”

“No, I… Yes. Fine.” He looked away as she unbuckled his belt and whipped it off his waist.

“You better lie down,” she said. “You’re so tall. I can’t do it well if you’re standing.”

He marched over to the bed, took off his cap and his boots and lay down supine, clutching the open flaps of his tunic.

On another night, Brina would have asked her Imperial if he or she were a virgin. Tauntingly. Ready to pass it off as a joke, relishing in their huffy protestations and reddened faces; pale Humans like Major Veers were easy to read.

But this wasn’t a time to taunt.

She sat across his lap, groin against groin, feeling him rise at half-mast through the coarse fabric. She smiled in that way Humans assumed meant thirst and anticipation, and whipped off her robe in a swift fluid motion.

His broad shoulders shuddered, but he was forcing himself not to pant yet.

 _Find him nice_ , Brina told herself. She pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his trousers and up to his midriff.

She cocked an eyebrow and hm-hm’ed in appreciation; Veers was in a better shape than many Imperials, fresher out of the Academy training grounds than he was, that she’d seen naked from up close. In a much better shape. Good. Finding him nice was going to be easy. Maybe she wouldn’t have to fake it at all.

Her hands caressed, her lips kissed, her tongue teased, one strip of fair-haired, fair-scarred skin after another, until she had to slip his tunic and shirt off. He sat up to accommodate the undressing, then sank back onto the mattress, his eyes fixed on the ceiling and his jaw set.

She took his hands, tried to pry the fists open but couldn’t stick even a nail into his tight-knit fingers. So she just pressed those clenched hands to her breasts, letting the warm flesh do the melting job. He relented at last—they all did—with a strangled gasp.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Relax.”

His long fingers fanned out over her breasts. She willed her body not to flinch at the unpleasant touch of sweat-cold palms and calloused skin. One hand slipped behind her back and down to her waist, to pull her down flat on his chest.

She kissed and lapped his throat, imagining she had icicles as hard as nails for teeth, like the witches of Mirialan winter legends: her tiny, blunted front teeth could only graze the pulsing blood vessel at the side of his neck. Her stomach churned at the moan he let out, but the medicine dulled the nausea at once.

His fingers sank in her hair, tangling themselves deeper as they attempted to disentangle the bun.

“I’m not afraid,” he breathed into her ear. “It’s… just that I’m not feeling it.”

Brina reached down between their bodies and quickly unzipped his bulging member free.

“Stars,” he wheezed.

“You are feeling it a lot. There is a stimulant in the cabinet over there, if you need a little help.”

“No, damn it.”

“That is my opinion, too.” She wrapped a hand around his shaft and stroked it to full-mast height. All the while, he whimpered and stroked her hair as if she were a tooka.

“I’m getting cold.” Her free hand took his chin. “You’re big, you could hug me.”

“Sorry. Sorry, I’m sorry.” He writhed away from her to yank down the bedsheets. “I was thinking you must be cold in that rag of a dress. Sorry I didn’t ask you earlier.”

Brina smiled and swallowed a grunt. Oh, precious; one of the chivalrous types. Maybe if she discovered his weirdest kink and obliged it, he’d offer to marry her. It wouldn’t be the first time that had gotten a whore out of a military brothel… well, only that the lucky prostitute had been a Human. “You don’t have to worry about me.” She shifted to the uncovered portion of the bed, lying on her back and spreading her legs.

He cast a furtive glance there and tore his gaze away at once, blushing to the tips of his ears.

“I’m property of the Empire, you know; your people don’t let good merchandise go wasted.”

He jolted up to sit, blinking the glassiness of arousal out of his features. “Property? Merchandise? Have you got no pride?”

A shiver raged down Brina’s spine. Not cold, not the automatic thrill of orgasm. More like the kind of shivering that had seized her while she was held kneeling at blaster point in a corner, and watched the stormtroopers tear her house apart. “Pride?”

Major Veers yanked up his pants and trousers, gritting his teeth and hissing.

For a moment she cowered, readying herself to weather an assault. But he stuffed his erection back into the snug clothes, and did nothing. She knew he must be aching; good.

“Pride,” Veers repeated. “You aren’t a piece of machinery, you are a person.”

Brina bit the inside of her cheek, until it bled into her mouth. A person, indeed. A non-Human, and the widow of a Rebel. None of these things qualified her as a ‘person’ to people like Veers, last time she’d checked (which had been thirty minutes before with her previous customer: a stormtrooper sergeant who purred ‘greenskin, ohh, greenskin’ at her as she came).

“Try to behave like one,” he said, that well-known sneer of Imperials wringing everything handsome out of his face. He snatched his shirt and put it on.

There were microphones and cameras in the room. ISB agents reviewed everything that was recorded. The infuriated words she couldn’t speak grated her throat like grit.

He ducked to collect his tunic off the floor, “Bloody hell, it’s wrinkled,” and she lunged towards him. He snapped around and seized her by where the collar of her shirt would have been, if she had been wearing one. Since she was naked, Veers grabbed onto her bare neck. He didn’t squeeze. His hand retreated as if her skin could burn it. “Never jump me again.”

“Pride is a luxury item, Major,” she whispered, hoping it was quiet enough for the microphones not to catch it. “I cannot afford it. The admiral told me you are a widower.” She wasn’t sure exactly what rank the older man was, so she took the closest guess; had she stared at the rank bar long enough to read it, the old man would have noticed and become lecherous.

Veers’ eyes widened. The scowl that followed could have knocked down a blast-proof door. “So Jerjerrod has been gossiping.”

“What would you do if there existed the faintest chance _she_ is alive?”

“She isn’t,” he barked.

Brina found it harder and harder to speak low and firm at the same time. “Do I disgust you? Because I’d let you ravage me in exchange for knowing if my family is alive? Or do you disgust yourself?” She cupped her hand over his tightly set jaw, prickly with the first shade of stubble. “You would have done the same thing. Don’t lie, please; I like you, I don’t want you to be a liar.”

“I am an officer of the Imperial Army, and I have principles!” He slapped her hand away. “I would never sink as low as you. Was your husband a Rebel? He must have been, or the A.F.A.R. wouldn’t have thought you needed _correction_.” It took his bared teeth a few moments to look like a sneer. “What would _he_ think of you letting yourself be ploughed by greybacks every night?”

“I told you. Pride isn’t for alien whores who married Rebels.” Brina cocked her head to seek his eyes as they averted hers. “Isn’t it part of your duties to _correct_ creatures like me?”

“I’ll leave that task to Moff Juno.”

She didn’t ask him who that Moff was. Moffs were usually older officers who drained the stimulant supply; that was all she needed to know. “You aren’t like the other Imperials.” A chivalrous type might be sensitive to this kind of flattery. “I like your pride and your principles. They mean you are a good man, Max. Do they make you hurt less?”

To this day, sometimes, she prayed to the Winter Mother: may the peace and freedom Zoan used to carelessly raise a bumper to at the village tavern have made the crack of a blaster butt against his skull less painful.

“I promise I can make you hurt less,” she tried, but didn’t dare touch him yet. “You may call me by her name, if you want.”

He slipped his tunic and belt on and retrieved his cap from the side table. The light automatically shone a bit brighter as he rose and stomped towards the door.

Brina tried to jump after him and tripped to the floor. Her knees bumped hard. She didn’t bother to bite back a yelp.

Veers was immediately at her side, helping her—or rather, hauling her—to her feet and sitting her on the bedside. “Jerjerrod fed you a load of bantha crap,” he said. “He doesn’t have the clearance to perform a search of that sort—let alone the guts to try!” His large mouth and deep-set eyes suited his cruel smirk. “He may have told you that to appear important, but the truth is, he’s just an engineering geek whose voice matters fuck-all in the Joint Chiefs council. Shame on you for getting so desperate as to trust him.”

His voice kept prattling for a while, but Brina didn’t understand Basic anymore; the words meshed with one another, leaving only the harsh, jeering pitch.

Clad again in his full uniform, Major Veers gave her one last hard look from the open doorway before stepping past the threshold. The door blocked off the noise of his footsteps, and the distant scraps of music from downstairs. The clock display signalled there were one standard hour and thirty-eight minutes left to pass.

Brina crawled under the bedsheets, curling up in a tight ball. A Mirialan mountaineer shouldn’t deign this sensation with the name of ‘cold’. But she was shaking.

When she squeezed her eyes shut and smothered the tears against a too-soft pillow, Zoan flashed across her mind. The last time she’d seen him cross the home front door, bleeding and being dragged by two stormtroopers. She had seen footprints of dried blood on the stone steps, too, when the Imperials had dragged her away.


	4. Chapter 4

Veers held fast onto the brass handrail to keep himself from reeling.

The brass was stingingly cold. He’d left his gloves either on the speeder or in Brina’s room, and he was not crawling back in there to fetch them, come hell or solar flare.

 _Idiot_ , he called himself at each step his feet descended _. Idiot. Idiot._ _Blasted fucking idiot._

Every word he’d spoken echoed in his skull, loud and fucking stupid. Her sad eyes burned him through like blaster wounds.

_Would it have killed you to be kinder to her?_

Even if the boner was defusing he still felt constricted in his pants, and that shot an extra dose of shame through every channel of his body.

The medbay, he thought. Must go to the medbay. Obtain certain pills he’d heard of, that could stanch a Human male’s sexual drive across the duration of long hyperspace hauls or in prevision of meeting pheromones-rich species. If the medical officer asked nosy questions, mercilessly pull rank on them.

_Some proud and principled fine bastard you are._

Shit, he didn’t deserve to touch another woman for as long as he lived. Which he hoped wasn’t long. Being a good man was a waste of time. It had been of no use to Eliana that he was a good man. She was dead anyway. The only thing he had left to be was a good officer. He angrily wiped his eyes on his uniform sleeve.

As soon as he stepped at the bottom of the staircase, he recognised faces among the throng by the pole dancing floor; his own officers and non-coms. One, an AT-ST squadron commander, Medal of Honour recipient and devoted father of three children whose holopic he kept over the control panel of his favourite walker, had climbed on another officer’s shoulders and reached out to tug the loincloth off the Pantoran young man who held himself hanging between two poles. Young enough to be around the same age as he and Eliana when they’d started dating.

Major Veers’ voice thundered across the common room.

The dancers stopped, the clink of glasses and the whooping noises died down, the music kept playing and it sounded odd in the silence. All eyes were on him.

He didn’t need to put thought into what he hollered next. It was like playing a pre-recorded hologram: _rotten scum of the Empire—all passes cancelled—general assembly in one standard hour, full battle gear and ready to march out the walkers—GET MOVING_.

It gave him a welcome ego boost to see them scurry out every door available. A less imposing officer might’ve been laughed or thrown ashtrays at. Earlier tonight at dinner, over the evening’s first round of wine, Admiral Konstantine had sworn to Moff Juno and Rear Admiral Jerjerrod that one such occurrence had happened to Admiral Ozzel.

Speaking of Jerjerrod…

There he was, sitting at the same stool in front of the bar counter, hugging the wine bottle and gawking at the stampede. _Target acquired_. Veers charged towards it.

Jerjerrod levelled on him a heavy-lidded frown. “Major, why are they evacuating the compound? I didn’t hear any alarm.”

“Do you love her?”

“What?” Jerjerrod leaned closer, nearly slipping off the stool.

“Do—you—love—your— _wife_?” Saying the word made Veers taste bile on his tongue.

“Why’s everybody trying to make me feel bad about my marriage? No, I don’t, the feeling is mutual, and I’d rather fuck Miss Circuits Overheating,” his thumb pointed to the ‘tender droid, “than her!”

The knuckles of Veers’ right fist connected with a bony part of his face, Veers didn’t see which one in particular. The cracking noise and the admiral’s backwards tumble to the floor were enough of a satisfaction. Curled up with both hands over his face, Jerjerrod wailed but didn’t try to get back up. Blood trickled through his fingers.

The bottle rolled over to Veers’ feet; he crushed it underfoot to shards, that he casually kicked in Jerjerrod’s direction on his way out.

The common room was more than half empty now. The dancers looked at each other and at dark corners of the roofs that probably housed surveillance cameras.

Veers tore the silk curtain off its hanger and strutted to the vestibule. Glass creaked under the sole of his boot at each step. The Zabrak madam inched several paces out of his way, with a deep bow and not a word.

The shitty song that was playing in the common room still rang in his ears as he approached the speeder. Fuck that noise. It was one of the chart toppers the troops enjoyed the most, and it was going to be banned until further order.

The stormtrooper must have asked some fugitive what had happened, and was waiting for Major Veers ready at the driver’s seat, with the engine already started. Veers saw a cigarette stub, still lit, on the ground in front of the speeder.

He stopped to peer over at the back seat: a body lay sprawled on it, with mussed silver hair and a rank badge pinned askew. “What is he doing here?”

The stormtrooper flinched. Stars, did he really sound that angry or was she more spineless than he credited her for? “Sir, I—”

Moff Juno grunted, wiped drool off his mouth, and laboriously cracked an eye open at Veers. “It was too noisy inside. I couldn’t sleep my hangover off.”

Veers pulled the door open and climbed on board, fighting the temptation to hurl the old man headfirst against the hardest wall around this square.

Juno seemed set to complicate that respectful task. Fucking bastard. “Did the girl like you? I know it can’t compare to the late Mrs Veers, but one hyperspace ring’s as good as any to make the jump—”

“I have just beaten up Rear Admiral Jerjerrod. I think I broke his nose.”

The stormtrooper manoeuvred the speeder out of the parking lot and into the roadway; Veers was sure she was very glad to be wearing a full-face helmet. He turned to look at the back seat.

Juno grumbled and slapped a palm over his eyes. Maybe it was just to shield them from the streetlights. Veers punched the interior light on, and didn’t hide a smirk when Juno groaned.

“Is that enough to discharge me from command of this garrison and get me reassigned to the frontlines?”

“Oh no, lad, not this. I’ve humoured such heartbroken suicidal wishes during the Clone Wars, and…” His spindly gloveless prosthetic finger rose to poke at the speeder’s ceiling. “…And I’ve had enough. If that girl couldn’t get your blaster cannon primed and loaded, I could try—”

“ _Sir_.”

Silence hung over the healthy whirr of the engine.

Juno harrumphed and hauled himself to the window, with a nimbleness that surprised Veers. The speeder left behind a trail of vomit for several meters.

“Blast it,” Juno said in a hoarse voice that sounded much older, as soon as he could safely pull his head back into the vehicle. “I need an aspirin. And to be twenty-three standard years old.”

“I know the uprising on Zaloriis has escalated. They’ll need more ground forces officers.”

“Fine, fine! I’ll arrange for you to get tossed into the meat-grinder. Shame on you for assuming that death is a leg… legmate… legalmate… _le-gi-ti-mate_ exit strategy to your sorrow, lad.”

“Thank you, sir.” Veers wondered if Brina had wished to kill him as badly as he was wishing to kill Moff Juno. He didn’t blame her.

“Now turn off the… the twin suns of Tatooine, won’t you?”

With a universe-weary sigh, Veers slumped back onto his seat. After some time, the stormtrooper raised a hand to the on/off button of the interior light, hovering above it. Veers said in a low voice, “That isn’t the Moff’s order.” She desisted.

“Blast it,” blubbered Moff Juno in-between snorts and snores.

 _Suffer. You deserve it_. But with the light on, Veers’ face must stay that of an army major. It forced him not to cry, and in order to avoid crying, to avoid thinking about Eliana. Spending the rest of the night tormenting his subordinates would take the edge off the pain during the darkest hours.

Soon, the war would fix the rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt catch: "turning the other person off"
> 
> "Brina" means "frost" in Italian. Yes, the irony is intentional.


End file.
